Advertisement

Advertisement

American feminists fight for abortion pill

Feminists in the US are organising a campaign of economic pressure to
force the French firm Roussell-Uclaf to introduce the abortion pill RU486
in the US. The Feminist Majority Foundation, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
says it will enlist unions, physicians and consumer groups in the fight
for access to RU486.

Roussell-Uclaf has been unwilling to launch RU486 in the US because
it fears a hostile reception from the large antiabortion movement there.
But Jennifer Jackman, director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, says
that the new campaign will show that refusing to provide RU486 will cost
the company more. ‘We are losing our patience with the drug manufacturers,’
she says.

The campaign will target several US subsidiaries of Roussell-Uclaf’s
parent companies, Hoechst of Germany and Rhone-Poulenc of France. The principal
subsidiaries are Hoechst Celanese, which produces fibres for clothes, and
Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, a pharmaceuticals company.

The foundation has recruited a group in New York called Corporate Campaigns
to help to collect information on these companies and how they might be
vulnerable to pressure. Corporate Campaigns has led campaigns in the past
on behalf of unions against airlines, the textile manufacturer J. P. Stevens,
and Campbell Soups. It is currently working with Greenpeace to try to force
Du Pont to stop using chemicals that destroy the Earth’s ozone layer.

Advertisement

Ray Rogers of Corporate Campaigns says that the campaign will have to
‘relentlessly raise pressure’ on the ‘whole network of power and support’
behind Hoechst and its subsidiaries. This network includes pension funds
that hold large blocks of the companies’ stock, consumers that buy their
products, physicians who prescribe the drugs they produce, and unions.

According to Jackman, many workers at Hoechst’s US subsidiaries are
represented by unions with traditions of strong support for women’s rights.
These include the Clothing and Textile Workers and the United Auto Workers.

The Feminist Majority Foundation was founded several years ago by Eleanor
Smeal, former president of the National Organization of Women, and Peg Yorkin,
a Hollywood producer. Yorkin, who chairs the foundation’s board, endowed
it with $10 million last autumn.